How To Use This Book

As noted elsewhere The Joy of Visual Perception is not a book in the
traditional sense. First of all, the obvious. It is software, presented on the World
Wide Web. Secondly, the book depends a great deal more on figures and graphical
representation of ideas and concepts than do most books.

If you have a small screen it might be a good idea to take away some of the information
at the top of your screen. This is typically done within your browser taking advantage of
choices in the "Option" or "Preference" menus. A little
experimentation will show you that which is best for your monitor and associated software.
If you haven't already discovered it, on the home page you can open the book in a frames
or a no frames mode. If you prefer no frames then click on the NO
FRAMES option. If you decided to use the frames option just go ahead use the book. But
if at some point, you wish that the right frame was larger, you can click on the vertical
dividing line and drag it to the left as far as you want.

It is not a book that requires you to start at the top of the Table of Contents and
linearly work your way through to the end; although that may not be a bad idea.

If you are using a browser that allows the use of frames, the following will be
very useful. You probably have noticed that when using frames the forward and backward
buttons at the top of your screen do not work. However, you can still move forward and
backward within a frame by clicking your right mouse button. A forward/backward
window appears and you can move around by clicking on the appropriate words. This web book
will work a little better with Microsoft's Internet Explorer because the animations are a
bit more effective with this browser.

There are a number of features in the book that will help you to navigate from place to
place. First of all there is the Table of Contents.
Like most table of contents it summarizes the main features of the book. Secondly, there
is a Subject Indexwhich is very much like
most subject indexes.

All of the figures give information on how to move to some other part of the book. Find
this information and click on it with your left mouse button. Finally, there are many clickable
text items in the screens that contain only text. For example, see the words Table of
Contents and Preface below. These words are characterized by their underlining and if you
have a color monitor they are color coded. These clickable text items also help you to
navigate to desired parts of the book.